


Stray

by orphan_account



Category: Discworld - Pratchett
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Ficlet, dwarfs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-23
Updated: 2009-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-03 17:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a secret, because neither of their families would understand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray

**Author's Note:**

> The pairing of Angua/Cheery was a request on a community somewhere, and my mind just boggled at it. Thus, this. I just had to see if I could make it work.

It's a secret, because neither of their families would understand. It's a safe sort of a secret, because if it did get out, no-one would believe it. They'd joke and tease, and joke and tease again, and Angua said they should groan at the teasing and complain about how they'd never hear the end of it, would they, because that's how people act when they've been caught in a misunderstanding.

'Or we could move to another city.' They'd both grow quiet, because it was altogether an unpleasant subject, and there didn't seem to be any good solutions.

Angua would have a bath and go back to Carrot, as she always did, as she couldn't help doing, even if he frustrated and annoyed and hurt her just by being his own guiltless self. Of course, she wouldn't hurt if she didn't love him so.

'Then what am I?' asked her other lover.

Angua struggled for words, because this whole thing was selfish of her. She needed to sleep sometimes, to feel comfortable and safe, to forget the world and be secret and alone, with someone she loved sometimes more than Carrot.

'I wouldn't mind going away sometimes,' she said instead. 'Some days it feels like the best thing to do. Go somewhere else and be gloriously strange and not mind what anyone else says.'

'Yeah,' said her lover. 'That's what I thought Ankh-Morpork was for.'

And that was true too, but the moment you put roots down somewhere it becomes a part of you, and the only way to change the self that had grown in this place was to run away.

She thought of running away often.

\--

'Maybe we could create a new braiding style,' said Cheery as Angua dipped her fingers into her silky beard, twisting the strands in the familiar old patterns. 'For us dwarf women, I mean.'

'Like tribal braiding?' asked Angua. She'd already learned about those after once trying for something new and interesting with Cheery's beard. Apparently the design she'd come up with had been the sign of a special fighting clan up in the mountains.

'Maybe – something not already in use, of course.' Cheery looked uncomfortable. 'Maybe that's a bad idea.'

Angua smiled. 'I would like to do something different for you. Maybe if I collected the hair here and here...' She held two bundles of hair up to frame the dwarf's face. 'That's rather pretty.' She ran her thumb over Cheery's cheek absent-mindedly.

Cheery smiled at her shyly. 'You're smiling.'

'Am I?' asked Angua distractedly.

'Yes, you are.'

Angua leaned in.

\--

Cheery Littlebottom was a very odd dwarf. A terrible quaffer, bored of gold, brave enough to wear a dress, and in love with a werewolf.

All she'd ever known was that she wasn't very interested in dwarfs, in that sense. That was a terrible odd thing about her. She liked some of them, as friends and dear ones, but none of them ever made it into her daydreams, into her special imaginings. She'd been told about the making of children and what they called the consummation of love, at an early age by a blushing and stammering parent who wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. It didn't sound very interesting to her.

What she had imagined, instead, were the smooth parts of skin, like her own on her belly, or the insides of her arms. She'd imagined the space of skin between beard and hair, and her fingertips on that skin, drawn lightly over that exposed area. That, to her, was the most intimate of things, and sometimes she would crave it so much it hurt.

They were so different, these tall hairless people. The first time she'd seen a human it had been a woman, beardless, with smooth downy white hair on her arms. She'd ducked back in the closest cave. Everyone put it down to vertigo, but it was so she could catch her breath. There were people like her after all. Not dwarfs, perhaps. But people.

'I'm hairy on the inside,' Angua had once said with a lop-sided smile. Cheery had been in Ankh-Morpork long enough to know that had anyone else said so, it would have been a speciesist remark.

'I'm tall, compared to lawn ornaments,' said Cheery, and they'd laughed together.

\--

Angua used to nuzzle Cheery's beard, run her fingers through the long curling hair on the back of her neck, to kiss her cheek, her lips, her fingertips.

'You can't think I'm beautiful,' said Cheery once, after Angua had told her so, one early morning as they lay together dressed in darkness and sweat.

'But I do.'

'You don't.'

Angua wrapped her arms and legs Cheery and kissed her ear. It didn't matter, really.

\--

Angua found out about the transfer request a full day after Cheery had left. A letter arrived for her that morning, full of secrets no-one else would understand. Angua read it, then paced the room for a moment, and read it again, and lay herself in bed and wouldn't move. Carrot, confused and desolate, obeyed her request literally and promptly, like he always did, and left for work as usual, to tell everyone she was ill.

That afternoon, Angua wrote a note as well, with different secrets, for Carrot. It was an apology. She kept some secrets for herself, and hoped for his sake he would obey her, as he always did. Then she stripped off her night shirt, and turned her hair inside out, and leaped out the window. There was still time.

Angua couldn't have left Carrot, not unless she was a different person altogether, but she'd changed before, and so she changed again. She caught up with Cheery by nightfall on the highway, with cabbage fields stretching to the horizon on both sides, and the sun painting the landscape in blue and red, changing the world.


End file.
